Old Bill
Sir: Please, no more of this Lord Oxford nonsense (Letters, 16 January). There is absolutely nothing in Shakespeare's plays which displays any kind of exceptional learn- ing; they show much what one would expect, a mind of enthusiastic but patchy reading. He was obviously fond, like many of his con- temporaries, of Ovid, though not learned enough, say, to know that there were no clocks in classical Rome. Nor is it true that serious classical learning was only within the reach of the aristocracy of the time, as the merest acquaintance with Ben Jonson's tragedies will show. It is rubbish to say that the author of Shakespeare's plays must have travelled widely in Europe; a play may be set in Venice or Verona, but there is never any local colour, and it is hard to believe that a seasoned traveller would fail to remember that Bohemia didn't have a coastline.
The pitch of absurdity is reached with Nicholas Howard's contention that the Earl of Surrey's aunt Frances 'would surely have introduced [Oxford] to Surrey's poetry', as if this were some kind of Parnassian drinks party; Surrey was one of the most popular poets of the 16th century, and quite as avail- able to a grammar-school boy from Strat- ford-upon-Avon as to a courtier like Oxford. The whole Oxford claim rests on ignorance, a deplorable and unpleasant snobbery, and a ridiculous assumption that the limitless genius displayed in the works of Shake- speare must have had an expensive educa- tion and the right sort of friends.
Philip Hensher
83a Tennyson Street, London SW8
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